News — 27 May 2011
By PSTracks Staff
There’s a new music streaming service on the block called MOG. MOG claims to be a “CD quality streaming service” but when we looked into it, it’s really nothing more than MP3 lossy quality audio. Here’s the down low.
MOG is a paid subscription online music service much like Rhapsody, where users can listen to, read about, and discover music. The social interaction element of MOG Music is quite interesting and is the defining element that separates MOG from everyone else. MOGMusicNetwork.com offers up-to-the-minute news and showcases (in the press release from the company’s words) “the most insightful, exciting, and hilarious music writing in the world from over 1,300 top music blogs along with a slew of informed rants and raves from its own writers and editors”.
The MOGMusicNetwork.com editorial team, lead by Andrew Phillips, editor-in-chief and former deputy editor of Flavorwire, brings readers the “most important and influential voices, exclusive videos, interviews and mp3s that can’t be found anywhere else online” or so the press releases suggests. There are reported to be 20 million MOG users as of this writing.
Users can play any song in MOG’s 10 million strong catalog on their computer through their web browser; on their mobile device through MOG’s applications for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and Android platform; via the multi-room Sonos system, and on their television through MOG’s channel on the Roku Digital Video Player. MOG also allows users to access aggregated editorial content from thousands of music blogs, user posts, and in-house editors.
MOG was founded by David Hyman, former CEO of Sony owned Gracenote and quickly partnered with Rhapsody to allow Rhapsody subscribers to access all of Rhapsody’s content through MOG.
By default, web streams are 320 kbps mp3 files and mobile streams are 64 kbps AAC files. Users choose whether mobile downloads are ‘high-quality’ 320 kbps mp3 files or 64 kbps AAC files.
MOG Radio, accessible through any of the platforms mentioned above, automatically generates a continuous play queue based on the artist chosen by the user, much like Pandora. By adjusting a ‘slider’ within the MOG player between Artist Only and Similar Artists, the user determines whether the radio plays only songs by the selected artist, or whether and how often songs by similar artists are added to the queue. When the user’s song selection ends, MOG Radio begins to play and continues until the user makes another selection.
Two different subscription plans are currently available. A $5/month plan allows users to access MOG through the web and through the Roku channel, and a $10/month plan allows access though these platforms and through supported mobile devices.
This newspaper objects to terms like CD Quality being used to attract and fool unsuspecting people about the service and believe this represents a breach of trust. We, in the high-end, know what CD quality means and represents and understand that lossless “CD quality” is the minimum standard by which we would accept high-end performance and everything less than this, while pleasant to listen to, isn’t high-end.
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Mark
Your chief complaint seems to be that MOG touts itself as CD quality when in fact it is 320kbs MP3 streams. Have you seen any other providers with a huge catalgoue and a univerally accessible service offering higher quality streams? If so, please share! Most if not all of the other services (Pandora et al) provide paltry 128kbs streams. MOG is a valuable retail service because it offers significant bump in quality, a change that you can hear when compared with the 128k streams. Instead of suggesting that MOG is somehow attempting to put one over the poor consumer, you should recognize that this is a step in the right direction. We need higher quality streams so that more of us will listen. The ‘good-enough-quality’ crowd has been in control far too long, and I am hopefull that new providers will get us ever closer to a world of high bitrate cornucopia.
paul mcgowan
OK, good point and thanks. We do have a bias towards misleading info about anything streaming, digital or high-end because there’s simply too much of it going around and it is confusing and turning people off. For example, HD radio is thought by most to be High Definition Radio when, in fact, it is anything but that.
At PS we continually battle misinformation about what’s “CD quality”, what’s high-definition, etc.
To your point, MOG is a step up from what else is out there and while that’s good, let’s make sure people understand that quality-wise, it’s still a long way from “CD quality”.
Ådam
I want to thank you for making me aware of MOG.
As a longtime RadioParadise.com and DeeperIntoMusic.com streaming audio listener, MOG is exactly what I’ve been hoping would one day materialize! I’m still in my 14-day free trial but I’ve already logged dozens of hours listening to albums that I’ve always wanted to own but were always below my “effort and expense” threshold that kept them out of reach (to say nothing of storage space). Now they’re just a few clicks away! And the depth of MOG’s catalog is mind-numbing.. two lifetimes wouldn’t be enough time to take it all in. And I’ve yet to try their mobile app which promises to fill my Android phone with the same music.
As for the gripe about whether 320K MP3 is CD Quality or not, while the claim isn’t technically correct, 320K streams are head and shoulders above what the rest of the Internet broadcasters are providing, and they sound just fine to me pouring out of my Acoustat 2+2s. And unlike Pandora, MOG doesn’t seem to suffer from vastly different sound levels and quality levels from album to album.
To understand just how different MOG is, I suggest you take in this chart: http://support.mog.com/kb/general-information/how-does-mog-compare-with-other-music-services
MOG is one of those services that’s so cool — and so cheap — that I’m just fearful that it fails to build critical mass and shuts down one day (it reportedly launched on $25M of venture capital). Let’s hope that never happens!
p.s. I am in no way affiliated with MOG.. just a satisfied subscriber.
Staff
Cool! One of the purposes of this newspaper is to keep people informed about all thing streaming, connected and high-end. MOG is surely better than the others we’ve tried and is, indeed, good. As bandwidths increase over time, we’ll get closer and closer to a seamless experience – like that from a CD. Thanks for posting!